Northwestern University’s international campus in Doha, Qatar is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research, and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.

Countering stereotypes through research

September 21, 2017

Justin D. Martin, associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, speaks with the Northwestern main campus about his work as a principal investigator of the University's Media Use in the Middle East study and the value of the data for journalists, students, non-academics, scholars, and industry professionals.

“In the West, the Arab region is often viewed as a monolithic whole, but we see many significant differences between individual countries,” says Martin. For example, Qatar has one of the world’s lower Facebook penetration rates — just 23 percent of Qatari internet users use Facebook —while in Tunisia the rate is 83 percent. “So you have two Arab countries often lumped together in discussions of an ‘Arab World,’ but whose citizens communicate in highly different ways.”